It has already sent a previously flown rocket into orbit - and now Elon Musk's SpaceX plans to do the same with a spacecraft.

Liftoff is now targeted for Saturday at 5:07pm ET after today's attempt was scrubbed due to weather conditions, even though this morning the rocket was raised to vertical at Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The milestone comes just two months after the launch of its first reused rocket booster for a satellite.

"This whole notion of reuse is something that's very, very important to the entire space industry," NASA's space station program manager Kirk Shireman said at a news conference Wednesday.

Scroll down for video

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with the Dragon spacecraft onboard, shortly after being raised vertical at Launch Complex 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on June 1, 2017.

THE MISSION

The mission to the Earth-orbiting laboratory will be the eleventh commercial resupply services flight for SpaceX.

The payload will include important materials to support more than 250 science and research investigations taking place during Expeditions 52 and 53.

When the Dragon arrives at the space station, U.S. astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer will grapple Dragon using the station's 57-foot-long robotic arm.

Ground commands then will be sent from mission control for the station's arm to rotate and install the Dragon capsule to the station's Harmony module.

The company's 230-foot-tall Falcon 9 rocket will boost a 20-foot high, 12-foot-diameter Dragon capsule filled with supplies and experiments - which was first was sent to the International Space Station in September 2014.

SpaceX refurbished it for Thursday evening's planned launch, providing a new heat shield and fresh parachutes for re-entry at mission's end.

There were so many X-rays and inspections that savings, if any, were minimal this time, said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of flight reliability for SpaceX.

The vast majority of this Dragon has already been to space, including the hull, thrusters and tanks.

Koenigsmann told reporters more and more reused capsules will carry cargo to the space station, each possibly flying three times. Dragon capsules are being developed to carry astronauts to the space station as early as next year; it's too soon to say whether those, too, will be recycled, he said.

The mission to the Earth-orbiting laboratory will be the eleventh commercial resupply services flight for SpaceX.

Share this article

The Dragon capsule to be blasted off first flew in September 2014, and it delivered nearly 2.5 tons of cargo to the orbiting ISS laboratory

The payload will include important materials to support more than 250 science and research investigations taking place during Expeditions 52 and 53.

When the Dragon arrives at the space station, U.S. astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer will grapple Dragon using the station's 57-foot-long robotic arm.

Ground commands then will be sent from mission control for the station's arm to rotate and install the Dragon capsule to the station's Harmony module.

The vast majority of this Dragon has already been to space, including the hull, thrusters and tanks.

In September 2014, and it delivered nearly 2.5 tons of cargo to the orbiting laboratory.

The Dragon returned to Earth about a month later, splashing down into the ocean.

In a presentation at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflightlast year, Benjamin Reed, director of commercial crew mission management at SpaceX, revealed the mission.

'We will be reflying our first Dragon capsule on CRS-11,' he said, using the company's designation for that cargo mission, known as SpX-11 by NASA.

The payload will include important materials to support more than 250 science and research investigations taking place during Expeditions 52 and 53.. Pictured, a Dragon capsule being mated to the tope of a rocket ready for launch

SPACEX'S DRAGON V2

SpaceX hopes to soon end production of the cargo Dragon spacecraft to focus on a next-generation version of the Dragon being developed for commercial crew missions.

Those CRS-2 Dragon missions will use 'propulsive' landings, where the capsule lands on a landing pad using its SuperDraco thrusters rather than splashing down in the ocean.

That will allow NASA faster access to the cargo returned by those spacecraft, and also build up experience for propulsive landings of crewed Dragon spacecraft.

While SpaceX designed Dragon to be reusable, the company's CRS contract with NASA required the use of a new Dragon spacecraft for each cargo mission.

According to SpaceNews, Reed said SpaceX has been working with NASA to demonstrate that the spacecraft can be safely reused for additional cargo flights.

This will be the 100th launch, and sixth SpaceX launch, from this pad. Previous launches include 11 Apollo flights, the launch of the unmanned Skylab in 1973, 82 shuttle flights and five SpaceX launches.

'It's a great example of the partnership we have with NASA,' he said of that effort to win approval for the reuse of Dragon spacecraft.

'We've carefully gone through a process of proving that you can reuse various components all the way up to a whole system, and how you certify that.'

OTHER REUSABLE SPACECRAFT

In almost six decades of spaceflight, only a handful of spacecraft have been blasted into orbit multiple times.

The Space Shuttles are the most famous, and orbiters Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour, flew dozens of missions.

According to Ars, only two other kinds of spacecraft, besides the space shuttle, have flown more than one time into orbit:

The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle taxis on the flightline at the Astrotech facility in Titusville, Florida, USA.

X-37B: The US Air Force has two of these autonomous, orbital test vehicles built by Boeing.

Each of these spacecraft has made two flights, the second of which recently returned to Earth after a record 718 days in space.

This mini space shuttle launches on an expendable Atlas V rocket and lands on a runway.

Soviet VA spacecraft: First developed to fly cosmonauts around the Moon, the VA capsule flew an uncrewed test flight in Earth orbit for 30 days in 1977. Less than a year later it was launched again, but this test flight made just one orbit around the Earth, according to CollectSPACE.

A single Gemini spacecraft—which was an orbital class vehicle—did make two suborbital flights.

The biggest challenge to reuse, he said, was stopping saltwater from getting inside the capsule after it splashes down.

'We've been working hard to update the capsule, to ensure that you don't have to worry about the seawater issue,' he said.

SpaceX plans to reuse Dragon spacecraft through the remainder of its current CRS contract, which runs through SpX-20.

He did not discuss how many Dragon spacecraft are available to be reused, or how many times SpaceX believes a Dragon capsule can be flown.

SpaceX hopes to be able to end production of the cargo Dragon spacecraft.

'We'll be reflying Dragons going forward, and be able to close down the Dragon 1 line and move all the way into Dragon 2,' he said, referring to the next-generation version of the Dragon being developed for commercial crew missions.

Earlier this month SpaceX completed a record breaking launch.

Those CRS-2 Dragon missions will use 'propulsive' landings, where the capsule lands on a landing pad using its SuperDraco thrusters rather than splashing down in the ocean.

That will allow NASA faster access to the cargo returned by those spacecraft, and also build up experience for propulsive landings of crewed Dragon spacecraft.

'That's a perfect step in the pathway to crew,' he said.

'We'll get very comfortable with doing propulsive landings with cargo first, and then with crew.'

Earlier this month SpaceX completed a record breaking launch.

THE KENNEDY LAUNCH PADS

Since the late 1960s, Pads A and B at Kennedy Space Center's Launch Complex 39 have served as backdrops for America's most significant manned space flight endeavors - Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz and space shuttle.

Located on Merritt Island, Fla., just north of Cape Canaveral, the pads were originally built for the huge Apollo/Saturn V rockets that launched American astronauts on their historic journeys to the moon and back.

Following the joint U.S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission of July 1975, the pads were modified to support space shuttle operations.

Both pads were designed to support the concept of mobile launch operations, in which space vehicles are checked out and assembled in the protected environment of the Orbiter Processing Facility and the Vehicle Assembly Building, then transported by large, tracked crawlers to the launch pad for final processing and launch.

During the Apollo era, key pad service structures were mobile.

For the space shuttle, two permanent service towers were installed at each pad for the first time, the fixed service structure and the rotating service structure.

On April 12, 1981, shuttle operations commenced at Pad A with the launch of Columbia on STS-1.

After 23 more successful launches from A, the first space shuttle to lift off from Pad B was the ill-fated Challenger in January 1986.

Pad B was designated for the resumption of shuttle flights in September 1988, followed by the reactivation of Pad A in January 1990.

The space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center Friday, July 8, 2011, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Atlantis was the 135th and final space shuttle launch for NASA.